About Panbo

All About Panbo

Hi, we are Ben Ellison and Ben Stein, Editor and Publisher of Panbo, and this page is where you can find out how to get in touch with us, how to support Panbo with advertising, and much more. But first here’s a disclaimer that seems necessary in this age of media distrust:

The only paid advertising on this site is the ads. We appreciate our advertisers, but they have no say over editorial content and, in fact — skeptics, please note — they never demand any. Moreover, Panbo does not sell any other form of advertising like links or product placements. We choose what we write about and we say what we want. Please enjoy!

Contact Information & Policies

Register here to receive email notifications about new Panbo entries and to get your comments published faster (we will never violate your privacy)

To make editorial suggestions or complaints,email editor@staging.panbo.com or leave a message at 207-200-3430

To submit a guest entryidea,email editor@staging.panbo.com. We welcome guest entries, but only about subjects like electronics issues you’ve solved or similar, and we absolutely do not accept anything with paid for text links.

But to ask electronics questions, please use the Panbo Forum because you may get more and/or better answers, and the discussion will be available to other readers

Test equipment policy: Panbo does not accept free equipment from manufacturers except for small items, software, and gear that necessitates drilling a hole below a test boat’s waterline.

Banner ads rotate evenly around all Panbo web pages

Advertising Panbo is proud to be an independent source of news and opinion about marine electronics, and we’re also proud to be supported by the AIM Marine Group and a fine group of advertisers. Companies wanting to present their products or services to Panbo readers can purchase display ad space directly from Panbo. The sponsorship-style program means that banner ads are equally rotated around our Entry, Forum and other pages. Please note again that we do not sell text links, reviews, or favoritism… just banner ads.

As tabulated by Statcounter (graph below), Panbo advertisers are getting the attention of about 60,000 unique visitors per month (and the numbers are growing again). Regular readers are a mix of marine electronics professionals and enthusiasts — the sort of folks who influence a lot of buying decisions — and “first time visitors” are often individuals who are researching a specific product or category with the intent to purchase. For more information, please contact the Ad Manager.

Panbo visitor statistics from 2004 to 8/18 (as recorded by Statcounter)

Frankly, it began as a bit of a lark — a way to learn how to write faster, I hoped — but more than 2,000 entries later, Panbo has become the center of my work life and the source of great satisfaction. Instant publishing often means instant feedback, and the site has collected a group of informed commenters from all over the world. We all learn together. Plus, the companies that develop marine electronics often read those comments, and thus Panbo has become an agent of change. All good!

Panbo has survived some hard times in the marine industry, plus the distractions of Facebook and more, but the site’s reputation remains high and its future bright. In early 2018, Ben Stein joined as Contributing Editor, then spearheaded the complete website rebuild that went live in late March, and became Panbo’s Publisher in September. Both Bens will continue to research, test, and write about marine electronics, and future site improvements are in the works. Thanks to all for visiting and especially for contributing.

Ben Ellison’s boating and marine electronics history includes a lucky wooden sloop, the beloved “test” vessel Gizmo, and some work shop mugging wearing a lab coat and a propeller beanie

Ben Ellison, Editor

While many of their peers were going “back to the land,” Ben and friends thought “out to sea” a better option, and in 1971 moved to Camden, Maine, to purchase a 1946 wooden sloop (his same vintage) that had almost sunk on her mooring. The planned circumnavigation never happened, but Ben has been making a career in boating with Camden as home port ever since.

For the rest of the 20th century, Ben worked mainly as a professional sailor and seamanship instructor though he eventually became Director of the WoodenBoat School and later turned his fascination with navigation and new technology into work on tide prediction software and editing Reed’s Nautical Almanacs. At the start of the new century, he began writing about marine electronics for various sail and powerboating magazines, a good excuse for a series of test boats culminating in the Duffy 37 he dubbed Gizmo.

Ben Stein grew up messing about on (small) boats and for him, there really was nothing more worth doing. Ben discovered this spending summers at his grandparents’ home on a small lake in Wisconsin.

In the mid-2000s Ben and his wife bought a 35′ boat and began boating on Lake Michigan. They found they really enjoyed cruising the Great Lakes, visiting the small towns, and hopping from spot to spot. Boating became Ben’s respite from a stressful, non-stop career in financial services technology. So, when the opportunity presented itself to step away from that business in 2016, Ben, his wife Laura, and daughters Molly and Madelyn decided to do the Great Loop. The family have now completed over 10,000 nautical miles of cruising in the last four years.

Ben has a degree in computer science and extensive, hands-on experience with all aspects of modern, mission-critical technology. His experience with computing infrastructure and networks maps very well to modern marine electronics, and he is now cruising, mostly full time, with his family aboard their Carver Voyager 570, Have Another Day. More Ben Stein bio here

Where are we?

Remote boat tracking and monitoring are becoming easier and more useful to own, and we enjoy testing them. And maybe one of us is boating near you. Ben Ellison’s Duffy 37 Gizmo can be found here via Marine Traffic AIS or via the Garmin inReach Share Map below, while Ben Stein’s Carver Voyager 570 Have Another Day is tracked on MT here with more tracking/monitoring coming soon.